See Naples . . . And Eat

Comfort Amid the Chaos

At Da Michele in Naples, pizza margherita is one of just two items on the menu. Yes, it's worth the wait. (2002 Press Photo Via Associated Press)

Naples was our first two-night stop on a week-long trip to the Campania region of Italy (a feast for the tastebuds and all the senses) that also included the shores of the Sorrento Peninsula and the Amalfi Coast.

Food is not the only feature of Naples and Campania, but it is certainly one of the most important. Italians like to say they eat better than anyone in the world. And in Campania, locals say they eat better than most anywhere else in Italy. During this trip (my first to the region since spending a childhood summer here in 1968), both claims rang true.

Perhaps the backdrop here is so overwhelming -- thousands of years of history, with UNESCO World Heritage sites in Naples's historical center, Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast; Italy's most notorious crime families; the sleeping volcano of Vesuvius; and opera -- that greater significance is given to everyday details. That would include its sublime pizza, perfect tomatoes, strong and fragrant espresso and some of the best pastry and ice cream anywhere.

Naples is a city of extreme contrasts. We found ourselves in the middle of soccer games, felt the wind of speeding Vespas carrying families of three, watched a makeshift display of thousands of exploding firecrackers welcome a visiting bishop at a neighborhood chapel and observed the constant streaming of bands of tough-looking police officers in vans with sirens blaring.

Amid the constant din and theater of the street, Naples's elegant cafes, with their smartly uniformed servers, seemed like the height of civilization.

At Casa Ferrieri, in a chic shopping district, we restored ourselves with Cafe Nocciolino, strong Neapolitan espresso sweetened with a spoonful of house-made hazelnut cream. At Scaturchio, one of the best pastrymakers in town, we braved the Sunday after-church crowds in the old part of the city for a taste of one of Naples's greatest and most ancient creations: pastiera, a cake made from fresh ricotta cheese, cooked wheat berries and fragrant orange water.

Pizza by the Yard

After Naples, we drove south about half an hour around the Gulf of Naples, in the shadow of Vesuvius, to the Sorrento Peninsula. We were shocked at how the ugly, dirty sprawl seemed to engulf everything, and then were shocked again when the mess disappeared at the mountain tunnels outside the town of Sorrento. It gave way to well-kept resort towns and to olive and lemon groves that fell down the hillsides to a clear blue sea.

We spent a few days in one resort, Vico Equense, perched on a cliff about 100 feet above the Mediterranean. Rather than the busloads of tourists that crowd into Sorrento 15 minutes to the west, Vico has the charm of a real town, enlivened in the off-season by about 20,000 locals.

Vico also happens to be one of the best spots on the peninsula to eat. A central meeting point is Da Gigino, Pizza al Metro, not just a pizzeria but the self-proclaimed "University of Pizza." The Dell'Amura family's place indeed looks from the outside like a concrete institutional building. Inside, it's one of the world's largest pizzerias, decorated with '60s-era bamboo light fixtures. At the peak of summer, the place packs up to 1,600 diners onto two floors and an outdoor terrace shaded by wisteria. Dozens of waiters in white shirts, vests and red bowties roam the place with dessert carts and antipasto trolleys filled with grilled artichokes and eggplant and marinated anchovies and salmon.

But the real specialty of Pizza al Metro is, as the name indicates, pizza by the meter. More than 40 kinds of pizza are served, as varied as unadorned basics and pies topped with clams or french fries. A meter-long pizza serves five, according to the menu. The rectangular pies (two-meter versions are also available) are baked in four wood-fired ovens and wheeled to the table.

Another must-see, well-preserved '60s-era classic is Gelateria Latteria Gabriele, a beautiful shop that sells all things dairy from its polished-steel-and-glass counters.

Gabriele offers an impressive array of cheeses, including the sweet, aromatic provolone del monaco from the Vico hills. But the big afternoon attraction is the ice cream and dessert counter. Pans of neatly arranged, creamy gelato beckon in such flavors as hazelnut, pistachio and tiramisu, along with cold regional desserts including Delizie al Limone, a custard-filled cake soaked with limoncello (the region's famous lemon-zest-infused alcohol) and bathed in cream.

The star among the desserts, to judge by the locals who filed in about 5 p.m., was brioche con gelato e panna, the southern Italian version of the ice cream sandwich. This treat starts with a two-fisted brioche, which is then sliced open, filled with ice cream, topped with whipped cream and handed to the customer in a napkin.

I wouldn't have known how to start eating the thing, but the locals, who dive right in wearing whipped cream on their lips and chins, seemed to have it down.

Still-Undiscovered Amalfi

We then crossed the peninsula to the Amalfi Coast, one of the world's most famous ribbons of seashore, celebrated by legions of writers, starting with Homer.

Fifty-five years ago, John Steinbeck wrote this about his experience on the Amalfi Drive: "Flaming like a meteor we hit the coast, a road high, high above the blue sea that hooked and corkscrewed on the edge of nothing, a road carefully designed to be a little narrower than two cars side by side. And on this road, the buses, the trucks, the motor scooters and the assorted livestock."

The Amalfi Drive is about a 50-mile itinerary between quaint but over-boutiqued Positano and the city of Salerno. The livestock is gone, at least from the road, which is surely smoother than in Steinbeck's time. The views and the terrain (steep hillsides striped with stone-wall terraces and filled with lemon trees and small vineyards) are incomparable. In the middle of the coast sits the town of Amalfi, with its grand cathedral; perched high above it is Ravello, almost too perfect, with its majestic villas and garden concerts.

One of the best ways to appreciate the Amalfi Coast is to leave the tourist routes and to explore the nearby but "undiscovered" neighboring towns, where (except for electricity) farmers, fishermen and cheese-making goatherds and shepherds seem to live oblivious to the 21st century.

On a day when we couldn't get into Ravello (the main road had been closed during the day for three months because of work after a rock slide), we headed down the coast and fell upon Cetera, one of the region's last remaining fishing villages. The town seemed to be constructed of peeling white paint and bisected by one stone street. A large commercial tuna hauler was parked offshore and about a dozen wooden fishing boats were lined up on a small beach.

Here we found the best meal of the trip, at a smart modern restaurant called Acquapazza. There is no menu, just some discussion about fresh seafood with one of the two cousins who run the restaurant. We ate braised tuna, which tasted as if it had been freshly dragged from the sea, and anchovies wrapped in delicate strips of cooked zucchini. We dribbled colatura (a sauce made since antiquity from the drippings of salted anchovies) on spaghetti and washed it down with Falanghina, a dry, minerally tasting Campania white wine.

Three hours at table concluded with an array of freezer-chilled local liqueurs placed in front of us: not just limoncello but finocchiello (made with fennel) and nocino (made with walnuts). Then we walked a ways up the one street through town past a group of old men milling outside a bar. As we passed, they dropped their conversations and fell silent, staring as if we had dropped in from a land far, far away.

France-based writer Robert V. Camuto is the author of "Corkscrewed: Adventures in the New French Wine Country," which will be published by the University of Nebraska Press this fall.